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The City of Toronto has selected Aurigo Software to manage its vast real estate portfolio, signing a multi-year contract with the Austin, Texas-based company.
The company will soon deploy its flagship product suite, known as Masterworks, that will manage all aspects of project delivery, such as oversight, cost control, and reporting, among other things.
“If you’re trying to manage a multi-billion-dollar program like the City of Toronto does, corporate real estate management decided they wanted to have some way of getting one source of truth instead of having to go to multiple systems to try and grab the data and reconcile it,” Michael Tooley, vice-president, state and local government with Aurigo Software, said to TechNX in an interview.
The contract runs for a minimum of three years, with a two-year extension option.
Once installed, the system promises to fully integrate all of the disparate systems that are typical in a large portfolio such as Toronto’s.
“Governments as a whole tend to manage these large infrastructure programs on spreadsheets and legacy software and other options that just really don’t connect with each other, and so what you have is a disconnected universe, basically of one-off tools,” Tooley explained.
Single shareable solution
By implementing the Aurigo product, the city will be able to best manage all aspects of its portfolio. “They wanted something that ran on a platform that would share the data between various modules,” Tooley said.
It is also expandable should Toronto decide to add more components. “Every product comes with the Masterworks platform, and if you want (you can) expand later to include financial management; to include capital planning or construction management,” he said.
Toronto’s portfolio includes 5,600 properties, worth approximately $17 billion, according to the city website.
Sovereignty of city data
All city data will be housed in Canada, which was critical to Toronto approving the contract, according to Tooley.
“Amazon (Web Services) has servers in Canada, so Toronto’s data does not leave Canadian shores, which was important to them and pretty much important to any government we talk to. It has every level of security you can imagine to protect the data,” he said.
Once installed, the Aurigo Masterworks system will help the city in three main areas: planning, building and maintenance, Tooley explained. But for the most part, “we find customers struggle, particularly with planning and building, and we’re there to help them.”
Using AI to prevent cost overruns
One of the biggest benefits the program offers is around project management. “One of the other struggles of large capital programs is not being able to compare past experience with future outcomes, AI helps do that,” he said.
“It can for example, if you have a certain type of project that always suffers from cost overruns, AI can help identify the factors in those previous projects and help steer you clear of the issues that caused those overruns in the first place.”
For Toronto, the Masterworks platform should allow it to optimize how it deals with its real estate portfolio by taking advantage of Aurigo’s data management.
“Data is basically currency in this day and age, so it’s what governments typically struggle with and Toronto is no exception. The difference about Toronto is that they’ve determined to do something about it, and that’s why they have hired us,” Tooley said.
About Aurigo
Aurigo was founded in 2003 by Balaji Sreenivasan, who is now the chief executive officer. It manages more than US$450 billion in capital programs, with more than 40,000 projects throughout North America, including with 13 state departments of transportation.
It offers services for cities such as Philadelphia, Seattle, Sacramento and Denver, as well as York Region and Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, and it signed a $1.8-million deal with Manitoba in 2025. Aurigo has an office in Toronto, as well as in India and South Africa, in addition to the Austin headquarters.
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